


To The Future

by Dirty_Corza



Category: Magic: The Gathering (Card Game)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Post-War of the Spark, Reconciliation, War of the Spark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25585024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dirty_Corza/pseuds/Dirty_Corza
Summary: Sorin and Nahiri were locked in combat until they weren't.“I see you made it out of the wall,” Nahiri had taunted, a breathless laugh on her lips even as the dual attack threatened to overwhelm her. He was trying to kill her, if she wasn’t careful he would kill her. She wasn’t any less grateful to see a face she knew, though, one she could trust to kill her, if nothing else. She knew how Sorin fought, unlike the other planeswalkers and guild members on their side. Even if he was coming after her, she could dive and spin and use his attacks to help her own reach the targets she actually wanted to hit.At some point, he had realized what she was doing. She had noticed it, when Sorin realized she was dodging just so, leaving his clawed fingers gutting one of the eternals instead of her. In that moment, his grim glare had dropped, and there was a hint of the smirk she remembered so well.
Relationships: Sorin Markov & Nahiri
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	To The Future

Nahiri had avoided this. Avoided other planeswalkers, familiar faces that would remind her of what had happened. Avoided traveling back to any planes she knew. For a year she managed it, traveling to unfamiliar worlds and avoiding contact with the others she knew held her power. Being drawn to Ravnica changed that.

On Ravnica, she saw familiar faces, half remembered as being around Innistrad before she had left. People she recognized more by the way mana liked to pool and swirl around them than by their face or voice, with the exception of Ob Nixilis, though as they had allowed her into their midst knowing her history, she bit her tongue instead of bringing up his. There was one face she hadn’t seen in that first meeting of minds. She couldn’t tell, at the time, if it was relief or dread that her once-mentor was nowhere to be seen. She wouldn’t know until hours later, when the fighting began to break out and while she faced a raging horde, Sorin Markov joined them in attempting to bring about her death.

“I see you made it out of the wall,” Nahiri had taunted, a breathless laugh on her lips even as the dual attack threatened to overwhelm her. He was trying to kill her, if she wasn’t careful he would kill her. She wasn’t any less grateful to see a face she knew, though, one she could trust to kill her, if nothing else. She knew how Sorin fought, unlike the other planeswalkers and guild members on their side. Even if he was coming after her, she could dive and spin and use his attacks to help her own reach the targets she actually wanted to hit.

At some point, he had realized what she was doing. She had noticed it, when Sorin realized she was dodging just so, leaving his clawed fingers gutting one of the eternals instead of her. In that moment, his grim glare had dropped, and there was a hint of the smirk she remembered so well.

“Decided you cared more about the fate of this plane than our disagreement?” he asked, a hint of venom in his voice she couldn’t say was undeserved.

“I-” she gave a breathless, humorless laugh as she directed the stone toward a new grouping of the mindless monsters. “What we had wasn’t a disagreement, Sorin. And this isn’t about the plane we’re on. What I decided, when I left, was to live.”

His fight slowed then, just slightly, just enough to let him be pushed toward her, almost as if he hadn’t meant to. “That hardly explains why you decline to fight me.”

“Doesn’t it though? I got my revenge against you. I want to look to the future, not our past.”

He was quiet for a moment, the silence between them filled with grunts of exertion and the sounds of gore falling around them. “And the fact you manufactured this combat to fight by my side?”

“We were friends, once.”

“You attempted to destroy my home.”

“You let the eldrazi destroy mine.”

“I-I’m sorry.”

Nahiri faltered at his words, the stone spike she was directing freezing for a moment as they settled in her mind. “I am too,” she whispered, knowing he could hear it even through the din of battle around them. “Maybe- we could talk? After?” She kept her gaze on the next wave of creatures they were fighting, hesitant to look at her companion, to see his answer.

The sound of battle raged around them, the silence stretching wide between them again.

Finally, just when she thought this brittle peace would be the last peace between them, she heard a reply. “Yes. Perhaps we could.”

It was small, not a promise, but a possibility. Something she had wanted to hear a millennia before. And hearing it now- she almost couldn’t believe it. A second chance at a conversation. A second chance at a friendship.

Or maybe, just a second chance at not having a sworn enemy. Just that possibility was enough.

\---

The fight ended much as it began- with Sorin and Nahiri on the sidelines, watching the Gatewatch given glory as the rest were given thanks. Simple thanks for those who had done simple things- staying alive, mostly. It was pomp and ceremony and all of it made Nahiri’s skin crawl with the memory of people worshiping a facsimile of her, carved into stone. She had never set out to save lives for thanks. Not six thousand years ago, when her spark first ignited, and not now, when she was coming to terms with the fact for all she could do, this lifetime would be her last.

Quietly, she turned away, stepping behind a half collapsed building to catch her breath and steal herself to leave. The wreckage around her was too familiar, dead bodies and undead bodies, and she could feel her skin chilling even under the warm Ravnica sun. She could hardly believe it had only taken a day for all this to start and end. She had brought destruction like this to Innistrad over the course of a year. The eldrazi had slowly made their way out to destroy Zendikar over a thousand years. And one dragon had set forth his armies and caused all of this in a single day.

“Are you ready to leave?”

Sorin’s familiar voice startled her, but Nahiri gave a nod. “I am. I just- I don’t know where to go.” She let herself be honest with him here, in this. As honest as she had ever been. His old chastisement of it still echoed in her mind, enough to bring half a smile to her face. “Any suggestions?”

Sorin studied her for a moment, his expression unreadable, not that she expected anything else. They didn’t know each other anymore. Not like they had when she was young and he was her teacher. It had taken her time to realize that, or to start realizing it. Not her time in the helvault, but the past months when she finally let herself question what she had done.

He seemed to come to a conclusion, holding out a hand. “I can take us somewhere, if you trust me.”

For a moment, all Nahiri could do was stare. Did she trust him? She had, once. Six thousand years, his assurance that it was the right thing to do is what had convinced her to follow the suggestion of a dragon. And a thousand years ago, the last time she had gone to him with trust, he had locked her away in a void with only her mind and the minds of countless demons for company. 

“Can you take us there, if I don’t?” There’s a challenge in her eyes as she meets his, as she reaches forward to take his hand. It’s stupid and reckless and not a moment of trust as much as it is a moment where she hopes the trust can be rebuilt. 

The answer she gets is the familiar pull of the blind eternities as they travel, an instant of moving and then- solid ground beneath her feet. Familiar ground. It’s only Sorin’s strong grip that keeps her from falling to her knees. “What-” she closes her eyes against the skyline, mind reeling with the familiarity. “How-?”

“Ugin was wrong.”

Slowly, Nahiri caught her breath, turning to her companion as she opened her eyes. 

“The universe didn’t end when an eldrazi titan was killed, or even two of them.”

“They were- killed?”

Sorin gave a humorless laugh. “Why did you think only one answered your call to Innistrad? While you were building your array, the others… Reckless, really, but the gatewatch never cares for the aftermath, so long as they play the hero.”

“So it isn’t only dragons who dream of gaining back immortality that the gatewatch meddles with. They came here, too. They did what we-” Her voice cracked as she let herself look around again. Two years, since she had visited Zendikar. Even the last of her hedron arrays were gone, fallen to the earth, slowly being reclaimed into the stone they had been forged from.

“They did.”

“I hadn’t- when I came back, I saw what they had done when they broke free. It wasn’t- I didn’t know.” The words echoed in her mind. Eldrazi titans, killed. Her home, Zendikar, still alive and pulsing beneath her boots, welcoming its protector. She frowned, though, turning from the horizon to look at Sorin, to study his face. “What of- of Emrakul. Innistrad? If they could kill the others-”

He shook his head, turning away to look at the distant plains beyond the mountains they stood on. “Imprisoned in the moon. To wait until she is ready to devour it. They couldn’t kill her, but they could reason with her. Or so I was able to gather after I… escaped the wall.” He frowned, a familiar expression to Nahiri, one that brought to mind years of training and a teacher never quite pleased with it. “I don’t think they could have killed her. Had she stayed on Zendikar, there would have been no bargaining.”

The words sent a shiver down her spine as she followed his gaze out to the once familiar vista. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again, looking to where their hands were still clasped. 

“For what?”

“For being cruel. For deciding the fate of your home. For being grateful that- that maybe, doing that kept Zendikar alive. For being happy that a different world is a prison now- that it’s your home. Though next time, let’s lure her to visit Ugin. Trapping those titans was his plan, after all.”

“Don’t feel sorry for keeping your home alive.”

“What about sorry for the methods?”

Sorin was quiet for a long moment, his hand giving hers a painful squeeze. “Perhaps…. Perhaps I should apologize for those as well. You came to me for help and I- I had my reasons, but I still broke a promise, to you. I acted rashly and in the end, it brought us… here. My protections came to nothing. I failed to protect my home, and I failed to keep my word to protect yours.”

Nahiri returned his firm grip, ignoring the way tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. “You brought me back. Earlier today, you were trying to kill me, and you brought me back. Why?”

He was quiet for a moment. “You didn’t know. You were unwilling to kill me, and you didn’t know that Zendikar still stood. I- just the sight of you had me attempting to kill you, and I knew Innistrad hadn’t fallen. And yet you were willing to put it behind us. Consider it an attempt to mend a broken promise, to an old friend.”

Nahiri let the tears fall softly on her cheeks as she looked at her once-mentor. “Thank you.”

Sorin met her eyes for a moment, giving her a small nod as he finally let her hand fall from his grip. “I should take my leave. Let you see your home. Make your future.”

“Where will you go?”

He paused, half turned away. “Does it matter?”

“You could stay. If you wanted. To mend a promise. You came here, before- you knew it was still-. You could stay, as a friend, for a while. No worlds to save, no schemes of dragons. Just… us.”

“Us?”

“There aren’t many that know what it’s like to live lifetimes. What it’s like to have lifetimes you’ve lived. I- wouldn’t mind a friend that understood the messier parts of it all.” There was hope in her eyes as she looked toward him, hope that he could hear the sincerity behind her words. She hadn’t often let herself imagine this, in her year since leaving Innistrad, but it would be a lie to say she hadn’t had the thought cross her mind. Usually when she was full of grief and regret.

When he met her eyes again, she thought there was understanding there. Slowly he gave a nod. “I will stay, for a while. For an old friend.”

She couldn’t stop the soft smile at that as she turned away from the vista to the small mountain path. “Then let’s go.”


End file.
